Customer Friction is any hindrance that is refraining the customer to complete his booking. Customer Friction can be because of anything that has adverse effects on customer experience.
The technological advancements have given hoteliers a myriad of opportunities to upgrade their business style. But some time lack of improvement becomes a cause of Customer Friction and sometimes improper implementation.
In each case, the business suffers.
These days the customers are very conscious about the services they get. The attitude of paying more for better services is prevalent in consumer behavior, especially in Millenials. So a minor glitch in the services will be lead in bad customer experience and hence, generating friction.
So in this blog, I am going to discuss what is Customer Friction and how we can deal with it.
The first to solve any problem is to find the problem. This statement is pretty obvious, but it needed to be quoted because of its significance.
Many times a problem causes a lot of damage before we recognize it or we bring it in the attention of someone who can solve it.
Keep yourself in the shoes of your customer, take a look from their perspective. Always be keen to find any issue your guests are facing, even the smallest ones.
You can talk to your guests, take their feedback, and reviews to find any pain point they have. Then after identifying the problem be very quick to solve it. This increases the trust of customers on you and reduces customer friction.
Multi-channel customer support aims to provide the customer with options to contact you when in need. It also elevates the customer experience as the total traffic gets divided and the customer does not have to wait for the solution.
Multi-channel support is very important as if the customer does not get the solution then the customer will take another option. The other option can be your competitor, hence giving you a direct business loss. It will also create negative publicity for you hence creating friction.
So as a hotelier you can offer live chat on your website, telephonic support, email support and social media support. This will help you in maintaining a proper connection with your guests which will avoid any kind of friction.
A fussy booking process is one of the main reasons guests abandon their carts. You should try that your customer completes the booking in the minimal process without any confusion.
Direct online booking is the key for a hotel business. And in this era when there is a great competition between OTAs and Hotels as much online booking as they can, losing an online booking is a sin.
Direct online bookings are too precious to lose due to a confusing booking process. So use a good booking engine like QloApps, with a simple booking process and create a clear call to action.
Doubts in the mind of customer are very lethal. It can harm your brand value, your reviews, and your overall image. Ergo, clearing the doubts of your customers is very important.
So always maintain clear communication with your clients. Send them notifications at every step of booking so that they are well informed.
This will instill trust in your guest for your hotel brand. They will feel connected. And it will be vital for you.
Then the other thing that you can do is to make a FAQ page. With a FAQ page, you show your customers that you know the issues that they are facing. This shows that you are very concern about the problems consumers face.
It also saves your time and resources to answer a similar question again and again.
One of the main cause of customer friction are issues faced during the stay period. When a guest is at your hotel and he faces any issue then it is very important to resolve it ASAP otherwise you will lose a customer forever.
So it is very important to train your staff to tackle such situations and also give them enough power so that they can resolve the issue.
The employee should have qualities like patience and listing skills. Then he should not play the blame game. He should have a problem-solving attitude.
Furthermore, when the issue is resolved then you should offer him something like an upgrade or add-on as an apology gift. This will erase the memories of the bad experience and ultimately reducing customer friction.
In a competitive world, hotels are making a lot of efforts to get as many direct bookings as they can. And if there is anything that impedes the influx of direct booking is detrimental for the business.
As a hotelier should avoid even the puniest reason to lose a booking.
So this was my take on how can we avoid customer friction and secure maximum bookings with a happy client base. Drop your views in the comment box and let us know what do you think.
We aspire to serve the hotel industry with our product QloApps and that process we have taken a step forward by launching the QloApps Forum. So please raise any of your issue on our Forum.
For any kind of technical assistance, just raise a ticket.
